This is the part that makes me a bit sad. Why would they spend the money needed to make for a smooth launch when it doesn't matter? - people will still buy. There will be some bad press, a lot of grumbling etc., but does that really impact buying habits for the next game?

I don't know, but I do know that my buying habits have changed in the last couple years. I personally very rarely buy AAA games anymore, and when I do I make sure to pass on games with even a hint of these types of shenanigans.

Which is a shame, since I would have gladly plopped down money for SC, D3 and many other recent titles.

As for it being the future of games, sadly the answer is yes, for major games.For the projects I've worked on and the stats I have seen piracy is normally 90% to 95% for major titles. I have watched as my own work hit a 93% piracy rate on our server telemetry. Always-online requirements and SaaS are one of the best ways to combat piracy. For some reason people don't complain about it any more with Valve

Because Steam(mostly) does it right. I don't really mind DRM per se, I just hate crappy, bugged out DRM. Which is to say %95 of DRM. I don't consider Steam to be more inconvenient than "please insert disc to play". If most DRM looked like Steam, I don't think there would be a lot of hate for it.

^ I agree with everyone except frob. And seriously OP, you didn't knew the new SimCity would require an always on connection and its a pure (more or less) multiplayer game?

I have a full time job, and generally don't spend hours and hours pouring over news sites and watching every last scrap of information pouring in on development of many games. Sure, I knew it was a highly social centred game, and was heavily focused on the online aspect, but it isn't like any of the devs were screaming:

"Yeah, and if the servers go down, you're totally boned and have zero access to any element of the game... And they're going to go down a lot."

I test games professionally as a near-shore contractor, and have dealt with dozens of games with highly social focused designs. Generally every game that comes across my desk with a "Single player Social" design aspect (Where game play is primarily single player, but with general social interaction as more of a meta-game) has a very simple design of when the network dies you carry on with your single player experience, and feel only slightly cut off from the rest of the game play.

When we find a game that utterly fails and craps itself when it can't see the server, we log that as a bug "User is unable to play game".

There is really Nothing in the game play design that would limit a user from working primarily offline. Worse, with their cloud only save they have this fun aspect where the game will happily Over Write Your stuff! Got back on awhile ago to find that part of what I had been doing when it was giving me 'warnings' of not being able to see the server was gone. "No great loss, I changed my mind and don't actually want to expand my city like that" was my thought when I saw the problem. Played some more, rebuilt the expansion in a more sensible manner, switched to another city in the region and returned to my first one: Oh look, that crappy expansion I decided I didn't want, and built better version of? Yeah, that one is back, and all my far better expansion has now disappeared.

Bugs and flaws like that are the kind of stuff I expect a first week newbie at a testing house to spot and point out.

(But in general, I'm less than impressed with the city building in this newest edition. Their curved street planning is wonderful, but they've horribly botched it by apparently sticking with rectangular lots, while making zone design even less informative about expansion and growth than previous titles. Where is the setting to view entire lot sizes so I have half an idea of how things are growing? I was playing heavily with circles and arcs, only to find out later that the high density stuff won't actually expand inside the huge circular road sections because their rectangular footprints would overlap and they block each other instead of fudging area with flexible building foundations)

Old Username: Talroth
If your signature on a web forum takes up more space than your average post, then you are doing things wrong.

People whine and complain about games that pull this kind of thing, and yet people still buy those offending games. Look at Diablo 3. Hideous launch problems, constant whining about how this is an abomination that must be ended... and yet one of the largest single-day sales records ever. Really? I mean, not to trot out the dead old D3 horse again, but this SimCity thing is the same exact thing, the same exact user abuse. And yet, people still bought it. As long as people continue to buy this shit, they are going to continue to stuff it down our throats. We're rewarding bad behavior. And yes, I'm guilty. I did buy D3, even against my better judgement. That was the last AAA game I've bought, and that will probably be the last game I ever buy from a AAA publisher. I just won't reward this stupid crap any more. Despite the fact I own the previous SimCity games, and despite the fact that I enjoyed the hell out of them, EA (and Actiblizz, and Ubisoft, and every other asshole company that wants to treat me like a criminal and disallow me from playing games I purchased) won't get any more of my money. I'm done with it, I'm done with them.

/soapbox

I didn't play diablo 3 on launch day, but I did find the whole launch process to be absolutely hilarious. You would think a company that runs one of the largest MMOs in the world could LAUNCH a game without massive issues. Guess not.

I did buy and play Diablo 3, I was very disappointed in the product. It was not a game that I found enjoyable. It is no longer installed, and after hitting max level, I didn't even bother with the top level difficulty because the idea of running through the EXACT same maps repeatedly offered me none of the replay that Diablo 2 still has. Nor did the itemization offer any sort of variation, due to the limited stats and applicability of runes, etc.

Meanwhile Diablo 2 is still installed

I'm not a Sim CIty person, I have Sim City 2000 somewhere around here, but it was not a game I enjoyed much, just not my kind of a game. Nonetheless, the idea that it would be an ONLINE "MMO" style game is actually quite startling.

Another prime example of horrible online issues: Splinter Cell. A game whose single player requires a constant online connection to Ubisoft's servers. Its great fun to lose a bunch of progress simply because someone at Ubi decided to reboot the server you're connected to and thus get booted out of your single player game.

Speaking of Steam:

While I'm not a huge fan of steam they have managed to CONSISTENTLY avoid these same issues that are being experienced right now by people. Borderlands 2? No issues at all playing it on launch day. Nor any of the other games I've bought through steam, with the exception of some of the early ones, like HL2.

So how does steam manage it? Here's a hint: Look at the URLs in your network snooper sometime. You might be surprised to know that they use the amazon cloud to scale automatically. Instead of, you know, having a bunch of servers at a data center somewhere.

So is this trend going to end? No. If anything it will become more common. My only HOPE is that these companies... EA, Activision, etc. will hire some people who actually know what the hell they're doing (with relation to cloud/scalability) and not do the typical game developer thing of rediscovering the same ideas the rest of the software industry figured out decades prior.

Edited by Washu, 06 March 2013 - 10:37 PM.

In time the project grows, the ignorance of its devs it shows, with many a convoluted function, it plunges into deep compunction, the price of failure is high, Washu's mirth is nigh.ScapeCode - Blog | SlimDX

Trying to get a refund on my online purchase... their game info page says it runs on a Mac, however after I purchased and installed Origin, it said Windows only. I'll stick to Steam / Humble Indy Bundle for "PC" games from now on.

This sort of thing used to bother me, it really doesn't anymore. Why is that? Well, because the minute I see a single-player game requiring a permanent connection, well that game may as well not exist for me, it just leaves my brain and the possibility of buying it just disappears completely.

My curiosity for the trend in general is for 5+ years down the road. I mean, I still regularly play games from the mid 90s... when its the year 2025 and no one plays this simcity game anymore, will there still be a server to connect to? And if not, I really hope EA and those like them have the brainpower to realize that releasing a version that doesn't require said server for a bargain basement price is still good business seeing as it won't make a dime without the server.

EDIT: Just looked over a page of the best selling pc games of all time by copies sold. I realize you can't draw conclusions about an industry based on one game, but my god, how in the world has Minecraft sold that many copies? It has no real DRM (at least, not in the sense we tend to understand the term), so if DRM is the only thing keeping pirates from ruining everything, how is it the 8th best selling game of all time?

Edited by Plethora, 06 March 2013 - 11:34 PM.

I'm working on a game! It's called "Spellbook Tactics". I'd love it if you checked it out, offered some feedback, etc. I am very excited about my progress thus far and confident about future progress as well!

And Minecraft didn't sell for 70-90 dollars. Plus, Minecraft is a different kettle of fish. Minecraft could have had DRM or been online-only, I think it would still have sold that many copies.

And this is why .... A lot of people don't care about online only and DRM. I mean when you give up on the politics and just want to play the game, well you'll forget about the DRM. I don't even know what DRM is other than an acronym. I don't have to know, I just know that when I want to play a game, I turn my computer on and start it up.

I'm getting sick to death of piracy and hackers. I want the industry to move to deployment and operational models that make piracy and hacking a rare thing rather than the usual thing. There might be some hickups, but I can put up with that.

While my feelings about always-on DRM are congruent with many of you, that aside server problems are to be expected on launch day. It happened with Diablo 3. It happened with GW2. It happened with Castle Story. I can't (off the top of my head) think of a game that had zero server problems on launch day (although I'm sure they're out there). Complaining about always-on DRM is one thing (although one could argue that hey, you knowingly bought the game). But if you buy a game, developed by any studio, that you know needs to connect to a server expecting not to see any problems on launch day you're living in a fantasy world. Yes, it's bad. Yes, it shouldn't happen. But you're an early adopter just as you're an early adopter if you buy a piece of hardware on launch not waiting for reviews to come out. You'll not only wait in line, but maybe find out that the store is out of stock and notice other issues with the product first. Let's be realistic.

But if you buy a game, developed by any studio, that you know needs to connect to a server expecting not to see any problems on launch day you're living in a fantasy world. Yes, it's bad. Yes, it shouldn't happen. But you're an early adopter just as you're an early adopter if you buy a piece of hardware on launch not waiting for reviews to come out. You'll not only wait in line, but maybe find out that the store is out of stock and notice other issues with the product first. Let's be realistic.

I'm sorry, since when was buying a game on release considered being an 'early adotpter'?What kind of bullshit reasoning is that?

Hardware can't be beta tested by large groups of people to find problems; games can. You can figure out load issues, check the server even WORKS before the game is released.

More to the point if I buy a graphics card and it doesn't work properly I can generally send it back for a refund - if you've brought this game, which hardly works at all, you are shit out of luck as you won't be getting your money back any time soon.

Trying to write it off as 'oh, you tried to play on release day, you are an early adopter, its a none issue' is frankly bullshit.

Basically all you've said here is "don't bother pre-ordering a game - it probably wont work so why give them your money".

I'm sorry, since when was buying a game on release considered being an 'early adotpter'?

Since you were among the first people to buy the game. That's what an early adopter is.

I hope you had fun playing D3 on launch day. Or any other game that required a server connection. As I clearly said in my post - yeah, it's bad. Yeah, in a perfect world it wouldn't happen. If you want to wait until you're sure you won't run into server problems, maybe wait until you are not one of the thousands of people barging at the gates as soon as they open.

Edit: And please don't put words in my mouth. I don't know how you got "don't bother pre-ordering a game" from my post at all. I said only what I said.

Edit: And please don't put words in my mouth. I don't know how you got "don't bother pre-ordering a game" from my post at all. I said only what I said.

Logical induction; If you don't expect a game to work on release day there is no point in pre-ordering the game.

Much the same as your hardware example; if you don't want to be an early adopter for a graphics card you don't pre-order the card (or buy it on release day) you wait.

This is true, though there are other reasons to preorder a game. Eg I preorder games just to know that I have a copy secured and not have to worry about it. If you preorder games that require server access for the purpose of being able to play them on the first day with no issues, then you're right - it is safer to wait

We live in a world of digital downloads and mass production - pre-ordering to 'ensure you have a copy' really isn't a good reason to do it.

You pre-order because you want to play on launch day.If you can't play on launch day then there is no point in pre-ordering.

In my case if I can't pre-order a game I want to play which doesn't come out for some time I tend to forget about said game and not end up playing it at all so a lack of pre-ordering can have a negative effect on sales.

BUT the point is when your game REQUIRES an online connection this SHOULDN'T be acceptable.People should rant.They should moan.Because if they just go 'oh well, day 1...' companies will CONTINUE to pull this bullshit where you can't play a game you wanted to play.I could almost accept problems in the first 12 hours or so after release as that is a horrible peak but when we are two days post release and people STILL can't get into the game for hours at a time... well... how is that even remotely acceptable? Even Guildwars 2, which had some launch problems, was playable with ease after the first 24h when the login/character creation servers had taken less of a battering.

And when you get situations where losing connection to the server during game play results in lost game play its even worst (one guy made sigificant changes to his city, it wasn't saved nor made clear it wasn't saved, so when he swapped cities from and then back to it to his surprise he'd lost all the changes.).

We live in a world of digital downloads and mass production - pre-ordering to 'ensure you have a copy' really isn't a good reason to do it.

You pre-order because you want to play on launch day.
If you can't play on launch day then there is no point in pre-ordering.

In my case if I can't pre-order a game I want to play which doesn't come out for some time I tend to forget about said game and not end up playing it at all so a lack of pre-ordering can have a negative effect on sales.

BUT the point is when your game REQUIRES an online connection this SHOULDN'T be acceptable.
People should rant.
They should moan.
Because if they just go 'oh well, day 1...' companies will CONTINUE to pull this bullshit where you can't play a game you wanted to play.
I could almost accept problems in the first 12 hours or so after release as that is a horrible peak but when we are two days post release and people STILL can't get into the game for hours at a time... well... how is that even remotely acceptable? Even Guildwars 2, which had some launch problems, was playable with ease after the first 24h when the login/character creation servers had taken less of a battering.

And when you get situations where losing connection to the server during game play results in lost game play its even worst (one guy made sigificant changes to his city, it wasn't saved nor made clear it wasn't saved, so when he swapped cities from and then back to it to his surprise he'd lost all the changes.).

Thanks for enlightening me about why I should or should not preorder my games, but I'm not sure my preordering habits or reasoning are up for discussion here.

I see, so you do have a personal time limit for when server issues are acceptable and when they stop being so? This kind of sounds like we're on the same page here, except the period when you can "accept problems" may be shorter or longer than that of others.

You can rant and moan all you want - keep preordering games that require a server connection and ranting and moaning every time you're hit with connectivity issues on the first day again (as you most certainly will with most games for the near future) or just decide not to preorder those kinds of games for that purpose. Good luck either way

I hope that eventually we won't have these kinds of infrastructure issues on release days. I'm sure developers put in every possible effort to smooth out these kinds of launch problems. It's not like anybody enjoys having these kinds of problems with the game they've poured their sweat and tears into. Until developers find a way to improve infrastructure and server load handling on the launch barrage I'll be realistic about what and why I preorder, and my expectations of playing online games straight on release. Waiting a while won't kill me and that way I avoid a lot of stress and the subsequent ranting and moaning.

(PS: Other issues such as the game not notifying you when it's saved are in my opinion a totally different story. I would expect a notification in this case that the city is not safe to swap and would totally understand the frustration at there being no warning of any sort)

I agree with Phantom that people should complain and rant about this - from an end-user point of view, having this sort of problems, regardless of when they are (at launch or not) is bad.

I wonder though what the alternatives are from the point of view for gaming companies. I was in on the early launch of the GW2 (having pre-ordered to play in the beta weekends, but that's a different story). There were indeed issues with the login servers being pretty badly overrun with a ton of players. Now, ANet had their pre-order numbers for that, and it's certainly plausible that they could have made a worse-case scenario that was much worse than the actual events that day (meaning, they could've anticipated 10x the amount of traffic on login servers), and its somewhat plausible that they could have prepared for it.

I thought about this on the launch day - but then it occurred to me - setting up redundant servers and anticipating worse-case scenarios is expensive. These extra servers and the setup would probably only be useful for launch day, after which the amount of traffic would die down (as it has) and the extra server setup would become unnecessary and probably only cost even more to maintain.

I'm not saying that companies don't want to have flawless launch days, but there's a cost associated with everything, so in my eyes, there's got to be some cost-benefit analysis that probably results in the fact that some launch day problems are a better alternative than over-preparing, in terms of cost. After all, the launch day problems can be handled, usually fairly quickly, by allocating exactly as many resources as are seen to be needed at that time, and the people who have issues will often times still go back and play the game, regardless of the issues (like I have: I had to wait 2hrs to login at one point, and while annoying, i still went back to play the next day and so on)

Anyway, I'm not an expert on this stuff, but that's my two cents.

Edit: Also, more on topic, making the single player portion of a game require constant internet connection is something that's absolutely bloody absurd in my mind, and something I'll never understand. I've yet to buy any game that required that sort of setup, and I never will. It pisses me off, especially because I often travel and won't always have a reliable internet connection. Yes, I know the arguments for piracy, and maybe it really benefits companies - but I still have my right to not buy a game based on that.

Thanks for enlightening me about why I should or should not preorder my games, but I'm not sure my preordering habits or reasoning are up for discussion here.

*shrugs* It's a matter of logic.10 years ago when games were stocked on shelves in shops pre-ordering to ensure you got a copy made sense.These days when buying PC games digitally there is no reason to pre-order to 'ensure you get a copy' as there will always be a copy.The only thing a PC pre-order gets you is a preload so you can play from the moment the game is unlocked instead of having to join the masses in trying to download X gig on release day to play as soon as you can.

If the game fails to work then pre-ordering to pre-load becomes pointless as you'll always be able to get a copy at a later date; of course at which point reviews come out, the game gets panned and you might not buy anyway.

With digital sales being worth 3 physical sales to a company (direct quote from an executive where I work) you'd really think that given they are getting 3x the cash back they would be able to ensure that the game works properly, that it can pre-load smoothly (seriously, how they screw that up when they own the chuffin' distrubtion platform?!?) and work right away.

I see, so you do have a personal time limit for when server issues are acceptable and when they stop being so? This kind of sounds like we're on the same page here, except the period when you can "accept problems" may be shorter or longer than that of others.

I said 'almost accept' - it would still be annoyed, I'd still be complaining about it but if they could get things settled quickly I'd be more inclined to buy a game from them in the future as it would show they can cope with the problems and hopefully learn from them.

Of course if you release another game which does the same thing then my likely hood of buying another game drop significantly.

Frankly given that I've not seen an offical statement about this and that they seem to have basically twisted the truth with regards to refunds for people affected my chances of buying an EA game in the future are currently at an all time low (and thats without the broken mess which is Origin being factored in).

You can rant and moan all you want - keep preordering games that require a server connection and ranting and moaning every time you're hit with connectivity issues on the first day again (as you most certainly will with most games for the near future) or just decide not to preorder those kinds of games for that purpose. Good luck either way

Amusingly I'm complaining about something which right now isn't directly affecting me; I didn't buy D3 (because I tried the beta and decided it was boring) and Origin puts me off buying EA games which are exclusive to it so SimCity was never really on my pre-order radar anyway (it could have been the game to get me using Origin, as I was intrested in it.. then I saw the price, laughed and closed the browser window).

Aside from games which ARE MMOs (Guildwars 2 for example) I've not had to deal with this kind of BS on release day - the reason I'm making a noise is because if people don't then this kind of thing will continue to happen and it's just bad for the consumer. Hell, if the company I worked for had the same problems I've be wandering around the office using the term 'bullshit' quite a lot and the only reason I wouldn't complain online is because I like having a job (although I wouldn't be defending them either...).

I hope that eventually we won't have these kinds of infrastructure issues on release days. I'm sure developers put in every possible effort to smooth out these kinds of launch problems. It's not like anybody enjoys having these kinds of problems with the game they've poured their sweat and tears into. Until developers find a way to improve infrastructure and server load handling on the launch barrage I'll be realistic about what and why I preorder, and my expectations of playing online games straight on release. Waiting a while won't kill me and that way I avoid a lot of stress and the subsequent ranting and moaning.

Unfortunately I'm not as optimistic.

Lets get it clear there I don't blame the developers for these issues - the guys and girls who made the game will have done the best they can I'm sure. Granted I don't agree with all their design choices but I don't blame them for the connectivity issues.

That blame lies with those who authroised the provisioning of hardware to deal with the login issues and those people are, more than likely, going to be the publishers and those in the publishers who deal with the cost side of things. Those guys are less likely to care (because they haven't put blood sweat and tears into the product) and only see 'cash out' vs 'cash in' and if the 'cash out' is less than the 'cash in' they won't care.

They will see the game sells even with the connectivity issues and will likely see no reason to fix it because for all the moaning if people are still buying the game then its fine for them. Heck if you buy the game and then don't play it because you can't get on its even better as they don't have to deal with the outlay to keep the game running AND they have your money. Win-win really.

As for it being the future of games, sadly the answer is yes, for major games.For the projects I've worked on and the stats I have seen piracy is normally 90% to 95% for major titles. I have watched as my own work hit a 93% piracy rate on our server telemetry. Always-online requirements and SaaS are one of the best ways to combat piracy. For some reason people don't complain about it any more with Valve

Because Steam(mostly) does it right. I don't really mind DRM per se, I just hate crappy, bugged out DRM. Which is to say %95 of DRM. I don't consider Steam to be more inconvenient than "please insert disc to play". If most DRM looked like Steam, I don't think there would be a lot of hate for it.

I think steam is more convenient than "please insert disc to play", or even DRM free games from for example gog.com simply because steam makes accessing my games from any computer, anywhere, easy and the DRM doesn't get in my way. (I've never even noticed it).

It is 2013 now so i don't have a huge problem with the always online requirement itself (I am always online anyway), but if i pay for a product and/or service i do expect it to be delivered at the date and time promised to me, there are no excuses, there is no such thing as an unexpected initial rush, with digital distribution you know exactly how many copies you've sold and you can stop sales in any region at any time. Blizzard failed with D3, EA failed with SimCity and i don't even care if Ubisoft fails or not anymore (I don't buy their games because of their past DRM fuckups and both EA and Blizzard has to be careful or i'll stop buying their games aswell).

If EA wishes to go down the always online route they need to commit to it, servers need to be up and running and can't be taken down just because a game is getting old, To get my money they will have to prove that they can deliver, not just on launchday but also 10+ years after launch.

I don't suffer from insanity, I'm enjoying every minute of it.The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!

You assume I am interested in only buying games digitally, that I am not interested in limited edition CE boxes, and a whole lot of other things. Like I said, my reasons for preordering are not really up for discussion - I'm not sure who you're trying to convince here. The fact remains that not everybody preorders for the same reasons you do.

That blame lies with those who authroised the provisioning of hardware to deal with the login issues and those people are, more than likely, going to be the publishers and those in the publishers who deal with the cost side of things. Those guys are less likely to care (because they haven't put blood sweat and tears into the product) and only see 'cash out' vs 'cash in' and if the 'cash out' is less than the 'cash in' they won't care.

The number of concurrent users in a game is likely higher on launch day than it will be from then on as people who have pre-ordered etc try to get in to play for the first time. Therefore paying to set up infrastructure that you won't need x days down the line seems extremely inefficient. It is a matter of balance and doing the best you can with the costs you're facing.

I'm sorry I can't reply to the rest of your post in detail right now, coming off the lunch break. Either way, I think I've expressed my opinion and I respect yours. Best of luck in your gaming adventures